Talk:Orson Welles
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Contents |
[edit] Trivia
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Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (August 2008) |
- Welles's persona and his problems in the 1950s and '60s are paid (under the alter ego of Leander Starr) an extremely witty and affectionate tribute in the 1962 novel Genius by Patrick Dennis, of Auntie Mame memory.
- During Welles's radio years, he often freelanced and would split his time between the Mercury Theatre, CBS, Mutual and NBC, among others. Due to this, Welles rarely rehearsed, instead reading ahead during other actors' lines, a practice used by some radio stars of the time. Many of his co-stars on The Shadow have remarked about this in various interviews. There are a number of apocryphal stories where Welles was reported to have turned to an actor during the mid-show commercial break and commented that this week's story was fascinating and he couldn't wait to "find out how it all ends." Welles admitted to preferring the cold-reading style in his on-air performances as he described the hectic nature of radio work to Peter Bogdanovich in This Is Orson Welles: "Soon I was doing so many [programs] that I didn't even rehearse. I'd come to a bad end in some tearjerker on the seventh floor of CBS and rush up to the ninth (they'd hold an elevator for me), where, just as the red light was going on, somebody'd hand me a script and whisper, 'Chinese mandarin, seventy-five years old', and off I'd go again... Not rehearsing... made it so much more interesting. When I was thrown down the well or into some fiendish snake pit, I never knew how I'd get out."
- Due to his busy radio schedule, he was hard pressed to find ways to get from job to job in busy New York City traffic. In an interview conducted in his later years, Welles tells how he "discovered that there was no law in New York that you had to be sick to travel in an ambulance." Therefore, he took to hiring ambulances to take him, sirens blazing, through the crowded streets to get to various buildings.
- He dated Billie Holiday around the time he was making Citizen Kane. According to Holiday's autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, she saw the film nine times before it ever played in a theater.
- Welles voiced a trailer for The Incredible Shrinking Man in 1957.
- It was Welles who suggested to Peter Bogdanovich that he shoot The Last Picture Show in black and white.
- He was considered for the role of Vito Corleone in The Godfather (1972) and by his own account was very disappointed not to have been given it. Some accounts state that he was the first choice of Francis Ford Coppola to play Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now (1979), a film based on the novel Heart of Darkness which Welles was planning to adapt before he wrote Citizen Kane.
- He was originally considered for the part of Darth Vader in Star Wars (1977), but George Lucas thought that Welles's voice would be too recognisable. Welles later lent his voice to the film's trailer.
- Welles narrated Drippy the Runaway Raindrop by Sidney, Mary and Alexandra Sheldon which continues to be a popular English educational series in Japan.
- He performed narration for two songs by the heavy metal band Manowar, a favorite of his niece. The narration of the song "Defender" from Fighting the World, released two years after his death, is among Welles's last performances.
- He died the same day as his Battle of Neretva co-star Yul Brynner.
- Orsonwelles, a genus of linyphiid spiders from the Hawaiian Islands, was named in Welles's honor in 2002. Many species - like Orsonwelles othello, Orsonwelles macbeth, Orsonwelles falstaffius, Orsonwelles ambersonorum- are named after well-known characters played by the late actor.
- Welles's ashes were buried on the property of a long time friend, retired bullfighter Antonio Ordoñez, in Ronda (Málaga), Spain. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.49.145.189 (talk) 18:56, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
- A statue of Welles was recently unveiled in Split, Croatia. It was sculpted by Oja Kodar – Welles’s companion during the final years of his life.[1]
- Why don't these warrent? Certainly some should go, i.e. the radio material would serve better being incorporated in the portion of his biography covering that era or the Mercury Theatre on the Air page, but the Spider genus? LamontCranston (talk) 20:36, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
[edit] self-contradictory material in article for removal
Section:
In his book, Whatever Happened to Orson Welles?, writer Joseph McBride claims that Welles left America in the 1950s to escape McCarthyism and the blacklist, though Welles himself denied this.[2] According to Welles, he personally asked the House Un-American Activities Committee to allow him to appear and "explain to you why I'm not a communist." They turned him down.[3]
According to McBride, Welles disapproved of many of the excesses of the 1960s, and disliked the counterculture in general. Much of The Other Side of the Wind is taken up with a satirical depiction of countercultural tastes and style. Welles was also extremely puritanical about sex, and told his friend and biographer Peter Bogdanovich that his film The Last Picture Show was "a dirty movie".[4] The only films Welles directed which contain overtly erotic elements are F for Fake and the unfinished Other Side of the Wind, which many attribute to Oja Kodar's influence.
- The above material is garbage. The first paragraph is self-contradictory in that it wishes to claim that something is true and at the same time say that it is not true. If the person in question denied what is claimed, its difficult to understand what the point of this is. The second problem is that McBride offers no particular evidence that HUAC turned Welles down or that this offer was in fact ever made.
- The second paragraph is even worse. It makes no sense. Welles is presented as a anti-counterculture sex prude even though two contemporary works of his contain erotic elements. Worse yet, we get conspiratorial garbage to the effect that Welles work doesn't reflect Welles but rather "influence" of Oja Kodar.
If anyone wants this material in the article, at a minimum it has to be presented in a coherent manner. The article cannot make claims that it then immendiatly contradicts. The article cannot offer theories about the influence of Oja Kodar. I dont see removing this material as controversial or even worth much discussion. Is anyone out there going to defend it? 70.234.224.231 (talk) 04:46, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
- I've re-edited the section to keep the text but remove the contradictions in the text. 70.234.224.231 (talk) 05:06, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Hilarious if true
In 1937, he rehearsed Marc Blitzstein's pro-union "labour opera" The Cradle Will Rock.
Since the unions forbade the actors and musicians performing from the stage, The Cradle Will Rock began with Blitzstein introducing the show and playing the piano accompaniment on stage, with the cast performing their parts from the audience.
208.127.59.28 (talk) 00:00, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
- No it was the WPA-FTP, and the whole affair is actually blown out of proportion - it was really just some political technicalities and they asked it be delayed a day or two. You dont see the same level of attention being lavished on Living Newspaper which was subject to censorship and condemnation on a number of occasions due to depictions of Italies invasion of Ethiopia and domestic labor strife. LamontCranston (talk) 20:29, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Treasure Island
I say keep the image - I don't see how it fits speedy deletion criteria. --Scott Free (talk) 14:56, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
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